I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.

To sing is to praise God and the daffodils, and to praise God is to thank Him, in every note within my small range, and every color in the tones of my voice, with every look into the eyes of my audience, to thank Him. Thank you, God, for letting me be born, for giving me eyes to see the daffodils lean in the wind, all my brothers, all my sisters, for giving me ears to hear crying, legs to come running, hands to smooth damp hair, a voice to laugh with and to sing with...to sing to you and the daffodils.

I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations - some large and some small.

We need to have faith in the people who are giving this movement direction to be smart enough to stay one step ahead of what's coming up next.

Somebody else does the rigor and then I listen. I have an assistant, and my manager, and other people who hunt and find and send it to me, and then I just figure out which ones I can do justice to.

I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?

When I was 16, the guest speaker was King. And I was completely overwhelmed because I had been studying nonviolence, talking about it, reading about it, but here it was happening, here it was people boycotting the buses and people on the streets and taking risks, which I think was the key.